


Facing Their Demons

by popfly



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Gapfillerpalooza, Hate Crimes, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-01-17
Updated: 2005-01-17
Packaged: 2017-11-10 04:22:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/462152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/popfly/pseuds/popfly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gapfiller for season two, episode one. Brian has nightmares, Justin needs to get out of the hospital.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Facing Their Demons

**Author's Note:**

> If you didn't watch the show, spoiler, Justin gets bashed at the end of season one.

Brian hadn’t had a nightmare in over a decade.

He’d had them when he was younger, of course. Foggy visions of monsters under his bed, their claws making scratching noises in the carpet, their growls rumbling through the mattress. Then there were dreams of real monsters living in his house, grotesque caricatures of his parents breaking down his bedroom door, his mother’s eyes bloodshot and bulging from her head, his father a caveman with fists as big as clubs. 

They were different now, more vivid. 

More real.

They started the first night he slept in his own bed. The first few days were spent with Mikey by his side, wired on caffeine and waiting for Justin to come out of his coma. The fourth night he crashed out at his desk, where he’d been reading the first sentence of an e-mail over and over for fifteen minutes.

Justin flashed his grin, that huge, giddy grin, and his “later” came out on a breathy laugh. Brian climbed into the Jeep, closing the door and watching Justin in his side mirror.

When Hobbes came out of the shadows with the bat over his shoulder Brian grabbed for the door handle with both hands, shouting Justin’s name. But the door didn’t open, wouldn’t open, and Brian could feel the panic rising up in his chest, strangling him. 

He pounded his fists on his window, fogging the glass as he choked out another warning, wanting Justin to turn around, see Hobbes, take off running, anything. Justin must have heard something cos his head turned just as Hobbes swung, and the bat smashed into Justin’s temple. 

Brian didn’t stop shouting, didn’t stop beating the glass, and he would wake up from the dreams with white knuckles and a wet face, covered in a sheen of cold sweat.

So he didn’t sleep if he could help it. He went to Babylon and danced and tricked and took tabs of E until they kicked him out, and then he went to the hospital.

At least at the hospital, despite some bouts of thrashing in the night and the minor brain damage, Justin was all right. He wasn’t bleeding out on the cold concrete of a hotel parking garage.

Brian figured that was the important thing.

*****

Justin hated the fucking hospital. And it wasn’t just for the normal reasons that people hated hospitals, although the paper gowns did chafe and the food did suck and laying in a fucking bed all day with people hovering about was the most boring thing ever. He hated it the most because Brian didn’t come.

Not that Justin really thought he would. He hoped, of course, that Brian would completely forget himself and show up and sit at his bedside and hold his hand, or just show up at all. Even if he griped the whole time and slouched in his chair and didn’t touch Justin at all, he just wanted to see him.

Some nights Justin woke up with a start, a tingle in his skin, and he’d dart his eyes towards the door. He would wonder for a minute if he really saw Brian hovering on the other side, but then he’d blink, hard, and when his eyes opened the hall would be empty.

Brian never showed.

And Justin wasn’t surprised necessarily. What he was was frustrated. Brian never came halfway, Justin had to go most of the way himself – hunting him down on the dance floor or at Woody’s, putting himself between Brian and whatever trick he had picked up that evening. But Justin couldn’t do shit when he was tethered to machines and had physical therapy every day.

So he did what he could. He pushed himself in physical therapy, working through the cramping and the tremors until sweat dripped down his spine and soaked the neckline of his tee shirt. He squeezed the squishy stress ball he’d taken from the PT room while his mom rattled on about Molly’s end of the year program at school and Daphne filled him in on graduation. 

Brian wasn’t coming to him. Justin had to do everything he could to get out and go to him.


End file.
